Cunning vs Smart - Leadership in Work, Health & Safety

In this episode of Risk!Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore organisational Cunning versus Smart and why it matters deeply for health, safety, and governance.

Richard draws on decades of observing large organisations and argues that the people who rise to the top aren't always the most competent, they're often the most cunning. But cunning alone isn't enough. The real sweet spot, what Richard calls wisdom, is the rare combination of intellectual smarts, real-world experience, and strategic savvy.

The conversation turns to boards and the growing concern that professional board members are increasingly disconnected from the industries they govern and they reflect on how this experiential gap is shifting boards toward managing legal liability rather than optimising safety, and what that means for organisations operating under SFAIRP obligations.

They also dig into the tension between institutional knowledge and innovation. Why you need people who've lived and breathed an industry, complemented with fresh eyes willing to challenge the status quo, and how engineering's broader role in building a better society fits into all of it.

And don’t miss Richard’s Kardashians vs Muppets joke at the end and how it relates to the topic.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email admin@r2a.com.au.

For further information on Richard and Gaye’s consulting work with R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au, where you’ll also find their booklets (store) and a sign-up for their quarterly newsletter to keep informed of their latest news and events. 

Gaye is also founder of Australian women’s safety workwear company Apto PPE https://www.aptoppe.com.au.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Cunning versus Smart in the Health and Safety space.

(00:13):

We hope you enjoyed the chat. If you do, please support our work by giving us a rating and subscribing on your favourite podcast platform. And if you'd like more information on R2A, our newsletter and resources, or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website, www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi, Richard. Welcome to our podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:38):

It's good to be back again Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:41):

Today we're going to talk about cunning versus smart, but as it applies in the risk world and especially in relation to work, health and safety.

Richard Robinson (00:53):

Sort of reminds me that I forget which comedian it was, the Australian comedian. We were talking what's the difference between the Muppets and the Kardashians? The Muppets are real.

Gaye Francis (01:04):

Okay. I wasn't expecting a Richard joke at the start of our podcast, but that's okay.

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Oh, sorry. I can't remember the comedian's (name). The guy who used to run Spicks and Specks.

Gaye Francis (01:12):

Adam Hills.

Richard Robinson (01:13):

Yes, that's right.

Gaye Francis (01:14):

Very good. So we're just sort of reflecting on why we think where we are...

Richard Robinson (01:20):

There is a relevance to that joke. I'll come back to it.

Gaye Francis (01:24):

<laughs> Okay. What when I least expect it?

Richard Robinson (01:26):

No, for the subject.

Gaye Francis (01:27):

Okay, cool. So Cunning versus Smart and especially in terms of risk and how we've seen people making decisions or not making decisions as the case may be. And you sort of broke people into three groups. Do you want to give us a quick summary of that?

Richard Robinson (01:46):

Well, this is just my observation about history and watching organisations. And one of the things I noticed is that it didn't always seem to me that it was the smart, competent people that got the top job. It was always the cunning. And what I meant by that was that in large organisations, you see there's a corporate change or some change in their business environment, and then the deck chairs shuffle around. And then the people who tend to survive that process tend to be what I call the cunning. Now, not necessarily the smart or the most competent. And that was always a bit of a frustration to me. And I used to watch all this with some interest trying to figure out what was going on. What I did work out, and because I saw people with great academic ability, for example, who had no cunnng whatsoever and just floundered around completely.

Gaye Francis (02:29):

So were they in the smart category?

Richard Robinson (02:31):

Well, no, it depends what you mean by smart. It's got to be smart and sharp. Whereas with what you really needed in your senior positions, are the people who were both smart and probably had some academic ability, but it depends what you mean by intellectual ability rather than academic ability per se, and had the cunning too. And whenever I found one of those, I found they were the right people to work for.

Gaye Francis (02:51):

Right.

Richard Robinson (02:53):

I remember, I think I told you when I was working for GHD, I was coming back on a flight. I was sitting next to Ben Fink, the managing director, and the Victorian government had gone through some crisis. I couldn't remember what. And he said, "Well, it's going to be a problem this time around. Previous times when crisis happened, they had money. And as soon as an issue happens and the government's got money, they'll start spending. And so what you're going to do is position yourself to find these things.

(03:13):

Now, when I looked at that board and they had Sir Bernard Callanan as Chair, who is the hero of Sparrow Force and all that sort of thing and the highest ranking Catholic in Australia and Ben Fink was from the Fink family who was sort of a Jewish family. And you looked at this organisation of these two people that are running this show and you thought, this is a good place to work for. These are intelligent people. They're cunning. They know what they're doing. And they also have the intellectual smarts to make it happen. And you just suddenly realise why an organisation is successful. When you see that kind of arrangement, you just know it's got to work.

Gaye Francis (03:47):

I think you called that wisdom, didn't you?

Richard Robinson (03:49):

Yeah. And that's what I referred to as the wisdom thing. And when you get a team like that, it's extraordinary. But that doesn't happen very often from what I've seen in business. And we've noticed now people keep talking about boards and how frequently they're changing and the kind of people who are getting on the boards now, that they're making it a career of professional board membership rather than being technically competent in the business that they're becoming a board member for.

Gaye Francis (04:13):

Or sitting back and saying what does this organisation need going forward? And it's not a short term vision.

Richard Robinson (04:22):

Well, particularly when it's a technological organisation, engineering organisation, where you need ... Normally you've got to have been in the business for a while to actually understand, whether it be water or rail or aviation or whatever the technology is, if you don't actually have an experience in that patch, being an outside board member is good to a point, but you need some people that really...

Gaye Francis (04:41):

Have lived and breathed it to be able to ask those hard questions or challenge those questions.

Richard Robinson (04:46):

Well, one of the things that frustrates us, I mean, I think I told you, I won't say which company it was, but I came across a lawyer board member. It was an underground mining organisation. He'd never been underground to have a look at what these people who worked for the organisation actually did. And we've commented a number of times we keep coming across ports and pilotage organisations...

Gaye Francis (05:05):

Haven't been out on the water...

Richard Robinson (05:06):

They've actually never done a job with a marine pilot to find it just what these people are doing. If you go out with a marine pilot at 2:00am in the morning on a stormy night, it's character forming, is it not?

Gaye Francis (05:16):

Yes, yes. I've done it a couple of times in my younger youth and not anymore, not for me.

Richard Robinson (05:22):

Getting off a ship when the sea is heaving one and a half to two meters and you get it wrong, you lose your legs, it's character forming.

Gaye Francis (05:29):

And I think that's probably a good thing. And I remember doing a job for a Board and they introduced that, not to do a pilotage because it wasn't a pilotage organisation, but they actually, for new board members, they actually took them around to some of their sites and they had to almost do like a site induction exercise. So they had this familiarisation with what the business did because just sitting in a boardroom and getting papers about what the organisation does doesn't really give you that appreciation.

Richard Robinson (06:01):

No, unless you're down there talking to them and seeing what they do and slopping around the mud or whatever the guys actually do in the job you don't really understand. And especially if it's 2:00am in the morning. I remember going down in the old yard in Melbourne, Flinder Street yard, which is no longer there, but I turned up at 2:00am to see what these guys are doing and they were completely astonished to see me. What are you doing here?

Gaye Francis (06:24):

I think we often do that as part of our due diligence exercise, don't we? You got to go down and you're really looking for what are all the conditions that the people who are doing the job are faced with.

Richard Robinson (06:36):

I'm not sure we do it as much as we used to.

Gaye Francis (06:38):

We don't do it as much as we used to, but we used to do it. I think that aspect of our work has changed nowadays.

Richard Robinson (06:47):

I think that's correct.

Gaye Francis (06:48):

And we're more a communication exercise of reporting up to the people that can make the decisions about what's being done and a communication tool.

Richard Robinson (06:58):

Well, I think that's correct because what we keep finding is that the organisation knows what the issues are as a whole, but the decision makers don't have a clear comprehension or articulation in a way that they can actually make useful decisions. But this is also to do with the fact that the board members don't have that experience that they used to have. So whereas previously, I mean, if you dealt with a rail organisation, several people on the Board had basically lived and breathed railways for the last 30 years, and it was visceral. They knew what the issues were.

Gaye Francis (07:28):

And then they were sort of supported by the legal representation and the accounting (representation), whereas it appears the boards that we've seen appears the other way that they're heavily leaning towards the legal and accounting.

Richard Robinson (07:39):

The independent directors and therefore they're trying to minimise legal liability rather than optimise safety per se. And part of the reason that's not because they don't necessarily want to make the organisation safe, but they just don't know enough about it.

Gaye Francis (07:53):

Well, we just did a whole podcast on that didn't we around the ignorance is endemic and what information do people have.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

Well, particularly when you see some ... I mean, obviously part of the reason the Chairs tend to influence who gets picked as a board member. One of the things you try and do is pick board members who are going to be agreeable with the Chair's point of view, but if you keep that up, you eventually wind up at a very bad place.

Gaye Francis (08:16):

Yeah. So SFAIRP is really encouraging people to be wise. So have the smarts, but also a cunningness about them that they can communicate what needs to be done going forward.

Richard Robinson (08:29):

But it's more than that because you've got to think up new ideas.

Gaye Francis (08:32):

So that's the innovation aspect.

Richard Robinson (08:34):

It's the innovation part. I mean, if you're just cunning and you don't understand the business, you're not in a position to think up new ideas because you just don't know enough about it. It's one of those weird things, and I can see why it's such a complicated thing, because on the one hand, you've got to have informed people to know what they're doing, but just doing the same thing for 30 years doesn't make you innovative, that's for sure.

Gaye Francis (08:55):

No, that is very true.

Richard Robinson (08:56):

One of the reasons why you get external partnership, because they come up with a different point of view and a different experience.

Gaye Francis (09:01):

So it's a really fine line between getting that balance of stable people who know about the thing and then new people, because it's often the new people that challenge...

Richard Robinson (09:10):

That's correct.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

... the status quo and have that innovation.

Richard Robinson (09:14):

And they'll becoming perhaps from another industry because one of the things we do is pull ideas out of other industries. It's a bit like that CORE (Conference on Railway Excellence), paper you did where you were basically saying, why don't train drivers have PPUs? They're personal pilots units that marine pilots have.

Gaye Francis (09:27):

Which is a situational awareness device.

Richard Robinson (09:30):

And technically there's no reason why they shouldn't. It's just that the railways haven' thought about it.

Gaye Francis (09:34):

Or we have never done it that way before.

Richard Robinson (09:36):

Railways don't like that. I mean, it's just not the way they go about things. We have noticed that the Boards are changing over so fast now that ignorance is becoming endemic in a way that it never used to be. And I suspect that's one of the reasons why we're showing up more often advising Boards. But what we're really doing is taking what the organisation knows and representing it in a way in which that Board, which tends to respond to liability more than safety, it answers it properly.

Gaye Francis (10:05):

Yeah.

Richard Robinson (10:06):

Which is a little bit sad, but that's what we mean by the cunnings are inheriting the world more than the whys, if that makes sense.

Gaye Francis (10:15):

But it is, it's very difficult. And how do you keep that corporate knowledge and ownership with the people that are making long-term decisions.

Richard Robinson (10:24):

Well, it's slightly more than that too, because one of the strange things that happened, if people keep talking about stakeholders, that there's the shareholders, but boards are basically taught these days that their shareholders are everything and that the people who work there are just functionaries to make it happen. And part of that's just comes down to money and when it only comes down to money and no other values and no sense of duty. I think you've got a problem. And if you look at the world at the moment, it does seem to be coming down to money, not a sense of duty.

(10:55):

Well, I told you, when I was around the Victoria Division of Engineers Australia, there's a plaque on the wall. Obviously, a lot of the Chairs that came out of there were all from the Second World War era & vintage, but I didn't even know who the guy was. I still don't know who that guy was. All I just said, there's a bust of him and it just said he served. Didn't say anything else. And so it was a question of doing the right thing by your organisation and your society as a whole, rather than just saying we're here for the money.

Gaye Francis (11:22):

That's probably, and I think that's where the importance of engineering comes in because if we all sit back, engineering makes a better society and I think sometimes we forget that.

Richard Robinson (11:35):

Well, the commercial people try to make you forget it, that's for sure. <laughs>

Gaye Francis (11:39):

Let's trying to end on a positive, Richard. But it is, you have to work in the constraints of that. And I think we've talked before, money isn't everything. You do need it to be able to do things, but I think you've got to keep that bigger picture in mind.

Richard Robinson (11:55):

But that's correct. But see, what's happened, we've commented on this before, what's happened with engineers generally is they've been pushed downwards and put into their boxes, if it were. And as that fourth year engineering student at RMIT remarked to me when I was lecturing there, you might all be born creative, but you can be trained out of it. So you've got to make sure that you keep that creative bug up.

Gaye Francis (12:14):

Creative and the innovation going.

Richard Robinson (12:16):

And that's the wise part. You keep looking for new things.

Gaye Francis (12:20):

And you do that by surrounding yourself with people and keep being more informed.

Richard Robinson (12:24):

Yeah, but it's like our frustration with the way the IT world's going. I sort of commented that one other time that I was getting frustrated that our laptop was being turned into a giant iPhone. Well, I just noticed the most recent Mac release, they've taken an iPhone chip and put into their most recent Mac laptop. That's what they've actually done. And then I was noticing that Windows world is seriously complaining. And what they've actually done is where we used to run the system ourselves and we're responsible. We keep trying to do that and we're resisting it, but what the IT people are doing is they're saying, no, we run everything out here in the cloud and you guys are just an appendage, just a phone attached.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

So they're giving you what you think you need.

Richard Robinson (13:01):

They're giving you what they think you want and where you're getting crankier and crankier about it, aren't we?

Gaye Francis (13:08):

So does that put us in the cunning, the smart or the wise category?

Richard Robinson (13:12):

We're aspiring to the wise. Let's put it that way. <laughs>

Gaye Francis (13:14):

Let's do that. Alright. On that note, thanks for joining us today, Richard, and we'll see you next time.

(13:21):

Actually, Richard, we did not finish because I don't know that you finished off your joke that you started about the difference between the Kardashians and the Muppets and how it relates to our podcast.

Richard Robinson (13:31):

Well, I tried to point out the Kardashians have been fairly cunning, but they weren't actually wise. And the question then becomes, which is wiser, a muppet or a Kardashian and obviously the Muppets.

Gaye Francis (13:41):

<laughs> Okay.

Richard Robinson (13:41):

Which tells you a bit about how we've gone as a society, doesn't it?

Gaye Francis (13:44):

It does. It certainly does. So on that note, I think we have finished now. So thank you again. We'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (13:51):

Thanks Gaye.